How to Stretch

pre-write your way to the creative mindset

Photo by SHAYAN Rostami on Unsplash

“Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable. Everything feeds into my creativity. But without proper preparation, I cannot see it, retain it, and use it.” ~Twyla Tharp

Hi friends,

One common theme in my dreams is that of being unprepared for something important. I dream it’s Christmas day and I’ve not done a single thing to get ready for it. No gifts bought, no food prepared, no tree decorated. Or there’s the test I failed to study for, the college class I never attended, and now it’s final exam day and I can’t even find the classroom. Dreams reflect our deepest fears. Not feeling ready or up to the task is scary.

Sitting down to write can be anxiety-producing as well. We feel like a beginner every time. We scribble a few pages, but are unhappy with the result. The words feel dead on the page. This is because we arrived at the page unprepared. Like athletes and musicians, writers also need to warm up.

Today, I’m going to offer you three of my best, tried-and-true pre-writing exercises that will help you enter into a creative headspace and prepare you for the deeper, more surprising work we all aim for.

In her book, The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life, dancer, choreographer, and writer Twyla Tharp says:

“This, to me, is the most interesting paradox of creativity: In order to be habitually creative, you have to know how to prepare to be creative, but good planning alone won’t make your efforts successful; it’s only after you let go of your plans that you can breathe life into your efforts.”

It’s a wonderful book and I highly recommend it. Tharp makes no bones about the need for hard work, good habits, practice, and preparation for dancers, writers, musicians, and all creatives.

I’ll make a confession here: I don’t write every day. I am not a workhorse writer. I have no set hours or daily word count goals. Likely, if I ever attempt a novel, this will need to change! However, I am creative every day. Thinking, feeling, searching, daydreaming, are all part of living a creative life. I seek out beauty, artistry, complexity in my day-to-day life. I pay attention to my dreams, make connections and discover metaphors. I scribble, take notes, read poetry.

"The assembly line model of productivity is a great curse to creative life, and so often what feeds the work in at least some of our cases comes from things that don't look like work." ~Rebecca Solnit

But this may not be how it works for you. You may require more concrete habits to prepare your creative brain to write. Maybe you have a dedicated work space, an ideal time of day, music that inspires you, a favorite pen. Honor anything that gets you to the page.

My goal in workshops is to help writers get to the best of their own writing, their strongest, deepest, most resonant material. To that end, I’m a huge proponent of pre-writing exercises before writing, and deep revision strategies after writing. I’ll go into more detail about deep revision next week, but today I’ll address pre-writing. Below are three pre-writing exercises aimed at getting you into an artistic and creative headspace. From there, you can “let go of your plans” and open yourself up the more surprising work that awaits you.

PRE-WRITING EXERCISES

1. Listen to the music of your favorite singer/songwriter. Have a notebook and pen handy. Stay off the internet. Close your eyes and listen. From an article on the effect of music on the brain: “The limbic system, which is involved in processing emotions and controlling memory, “lights” up when our ears perceive music. The chills you feel when you hear a particularly moving piece of music may be the result of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that triggers sensations of pleasure and well-being.” So! Write down any lyrics that resonate with you. Handwriting lyrics is a means of engaging with the work. You’re pinging different parts of your brain, opening yourself up to new associations and connections. At some point, you’ll likely feel inspired to write. Something will click. The writing that follows will have sprung from something deep in your subconscious. I was listening to Joni Mitchell’s “Free Man in Paris” when I was struck by the phrase, “some hard, hot places come down to smoke and ash” and I wrote a story that was later published in Ploughshares.

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2. Write fifty random sentences. I’m a believer in this pre-writing exercise as it’s gotten me to a new, unexpected story nearly every time I’ve tried it. I explain how this exercise works on the Lascaux Review website.

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3. Write a dream as if it’s real. This does fascinating things for your writing. By not identifying the dream as a dream, just writing it straight, you, in a sense, prepare your brain for creativity. What keeps us from writing sometimes is that we forget we can write anything we want! Yes, this can lead to surreal or absurd writing, but it can also tickle your brain to make more playful and imaginative use of language and metaphor. You’ve prepared by opening yourself up to fresh possibilities, by giving yourself permission to get strange.

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Next week, I’ll offer some post-writing exercises aimed at revising and deepening your work. Until then, happy writing, my friends. If you give any of these pre-writing exercises a whirl, I’d love to hear how it went for you!

Peace & Love,

Kathy